This is Sarah Jones on the Politicus Pod for PoliticusUSA’s The Daily.
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There’s a troubling theme coalescing on the Right that points to being anti-U.S. defense and anti-U.S. national security. Let’s break it down.
Tucker Carlson, McCarthy, all Republicans know what really happened on Jan 6th. Why are they pushing lies that not only whitewash the attack but make the next one more likely?
Treason
THEY KNOW. They know this is all bad for the United States and that it looks like treason.
In a Washington Post piece on the internal Fox News correspondence being released in recent in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the most watched conservative media outlet, we found out that Fox called what Trump did “treason”:
Raffel (Josh Raffel, former Trump White House aid) flagged to Shah a tweet noting that Trump’s daily schedule now carried with it the vague assurance that the president would make “many calls and have many meetings” and “work from early in the morning until late in the evening.”
“I think what they meant is The President will wake up early and commit many, many crimes including but not limited to obstruction of justice, attempted fraud, and treason in an effort to conduct a coup. Then he’ll fly to a rally in furtherance of the same,” Raffel wrote.
“It’s really disheartening,” Shah responded. “The only clear cut evidence for voter fraud is the failed attempts from Trump.”
“Sidney Powell is lying,” Carlson wrote in a Nov. 17 text.
“Might wanna address this, but this stuff is so f------ insane. Vote rigging to the tune of millions? C’mon,” (senior vice president of Fox Corp. Raj Shah, who had also served as a senior aide in Trump’s White House) wrote.
As for what they really think of their viewers to whom they lie regularly? “Cousin f***ing” “terrorists”:
Carlson’s producer, Alex Pfeiffer, responded: “It is so insane but our viewers believe it so addressing again how her stupid Venezuela affidavit isn’t proof might insult them.”
“Like negotiating with terrorists,” (Pfeiffer) added, “but especially dumb ones. Cousin f----- types not saudi royalty.”
McCarthy
Republican barely Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has opened multiple doors to threaten our security, from Marjorie Taylor Green to Tucker Carlson to his refusal to comply with the bipartisan House January 6 Select Committee’s subpoenas about his knowledge regarding the Republican Presidential-led attempted coup attack on the United States Capitol.
Now Kevin McCarthy is in charge of a very small Republican majority in the House, and he is using that power to weaponize the government to hold misleading hearings about imaginary conservative grievances that are sometimes a clear case of “DARVO”: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, and give 1/6 security footage to a partisan liar to launder for Republicans.
In one of those hearings, Marjorie Taylor Greene divulged classified information.
A Problem Like Marjorie
McCarthy has ensured that Marjorie Taylor Greene is in the position to continue to endanger the U.S..
Rep. Greene didn’t realize that Ukraine was in Europe. She was just so sure, you see.
“I’ve never seen Putin actually show in any detail his plans to invade Europe. No one has shown me that. So I don’t believe the lies that I’m being told about this.”
Well. Putin didn’t need to detail it, did he. Because he has already invaded. This fact is a lie, according to Greene, who clearly didn’t know Ukraine is the second-largest European country.
For a self-asserted expert on borders, she also seems clueless that Ukraine borders Russia. Perhaps a map would be helpful for the homeland security expert?
That’s right. The Georgia Republican is on the Homeland Security Committee, specifically the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability and the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement.
Yet:
During a border hearing, after being told that the information she was divulging was given to the Chief in a secure SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) and not something he thought he should share, Greene dismissed him with: “I understand Chief Ortiz, but I’m not gonna be confidential because I think people deserve to know.”
This is made all the worse because the “explosive device” MTG thinks justifies her sharing classified information when she feels like it was actually…
DIRT.
“During a Jan. briefing, leadership was notified that Agents found a duct-taped ball filled with sand that wasn't deemed a threat to agents/public.”
Sure, Chief Ortiz, but you know who is a threat to agents and the public? That’s right. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Laundering Russian PR
Before we get to this next part, it’s important to put the lie in context. On Thursday, the Polish interior minister said the nine people arrested in Poland as part of what it says is a Russian spy ring had received orders from Russia “to carry out propaganda activities in order to destabilize Polish-Ukrainian relations, incite and arouse hostile sentiments toward NATO countries in Poland, and to attack the Polish government’s policy toward Ukraine.”
Sound familiar? Yep. Here we go to Fox News to get the latest Russian talking points from Tucker Carlson’s show.
Guest Douglas MacGregor sold some hardcore Russian propaganda on Tucker Carlson’s anti-U.S. TV program on Wednesday night, falsely claiming that “this war was not started by Russia.”
“The truth is coming out that this war was not started by Russia. That Russia begged us not to try and drag Ukraine into NATO. We ignored Russia. And Russia made it very clear that they were going to defend their national interest. All they wanted was neutrality for Ukraine.”
Russia is committing war crimes
Russia invaded Ukraine illegally. Russia is also committing war crimes.
Yes, war crimes, which isn’t new. A top United Nations human rights inquiry in 2022 found Russia to be committing war crimes, and the latest report goes so far as to recommend Russia be investigated for crimes against humanity.
And while in 2022 they found two instances of Ukrainian forces responsible for human rights violations, they found “significantly larger numbers of instances that amount to war crimes on the part of the Russian Federation.”
Meanwhile, Russia is engaging in torture, unlawfully transferring children and deporting them, separating them from their families, raping children as young as 4 years old, the willful killings of civilians, rape and other sexual violence. And again, they invaded a sovereign nation.
Isolationists?
The Republican Party is suddenly led by “isolationists”… but only when it comes to Ukraine.
That’s the generous way of discussing an appeasement strategy, but since it only applies to Russia, it would be misleading to leave it there. This is not an isolationist party, save for some members of the Libertarian wing. The Republican Party has always been the party of war hawks, pro-defense to the point of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq on a false premise.
We discussed the Republican Russian backstory and Ron DeSantis joining the growing collection of weak Republican Putin slaves on Tuesday. A dozen or so Republican Senators found the courage to speak out against DeSantis’ Ukraine stance, showing the growing division in the party between the Trump Russia wing and the patriot wing of pro-small d democracy Republicans.
Pushing Jan 6th Lies
McCarthy still has not released the 1/6 security footage for the public to see it in an unedited format. Why?
Instead, McCarthy chose to even further elevate Tucker Carlson, the aforementioned Russian propagandist, by giving Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of January 6th security footage with which to amplify 1/6 lies.
Some members of Congress have condemned McCarthy’s actions, but words don’t matter to politicians who cater to the No Shame constituency.
Tucker has willfully and deceptively edited the footage in an attempt to create the false impression that the Trump terrorists were just “sightseers.”
These “sightseers” were a part of the attack on the U.S. Capitol working to stop the certification of the 2020 election. That is not what a sightseer does.
January 6th: What It Was Really Like
(trigger warnings for violence)
FBI Director Christopher Wray labeled the January 6th a domestic terrorist attack.
In March of 2021, Wray “bluntly labeled the January riot at the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorism” Tuesday and warned of a rapidly growing threat of homegrown violent extremism that law enforcement is scrambling to confront through thousands of investigations.”
Tucker Carlson, Speaker McCarthy, all of the Republicans on the Homeland Security committee, they all know this. Why are they pushing lies that not only whitewash the attack but make the next one more likely?
Here’s a video, with the warning that it’s violent and disturbing:
Here is the truth from people who were actually there, instead of someone vaccinated and protected in a Fox News studio getting his makeup done so he could lie more to his viewers.
"It was like something from a medieval battle," said Army veteran Aquilino Gonell, a Capitol Police sergeant. "We fought hand to hand, inch by inch, to prevent an invasion of the Capitol by a violent mob intent on subverting our democratic process."
Gonell, who has since retired citing trauma from the 1/6 attack, said it was worse than what he had faced during his deployment to the Iraq War.
"Nothing in my experience in the Army or as a law enforcement officer prepared me for what we confronted on Jan. 6," Gonell said in his testimony. "I did not recognize my fellow citizens.” One of them "shouted that I – an Army veteran and a police officer – should be executed."
Gonell and his colleagues were prayed with chemicals, punched and kicked. He said, "I could feel myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself, 'This is how I'm going to die.’”
DC Metro officer Michael Fanone nearly died on Jan. 6 after Trump terrorists beat him until he was unconscious and he suffered a heart attack.
As they were beating him, Fanone says he heard a Trump attacker shout: “Get his gun! Kill him with his own weapon.”
"I was electrocuted again and again and again with a taser. I’m sure I was screaming but I don’t think I could even hear my own voice.”
He says he pleaded with them not to kill him, saying: "I have kids.”
Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn recounted being called the “n word” after he tried to bring the attackers back to reality by pointing out that the election wasn’t stolen, and that his vote wasn’t imaginary. “One woman in a pink 'MAGA' shirt yelled, “You hear that, guys, this (N-word) voted for Joe Biden!”
How did the conservative base react to their own attacking law enforcement and Army veterans?
Tucker Carlson demeaned Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, calling him an angry “activist.”
Conclusion:
The domestic terrorists who attacked our country are now being feted by House Republicans. The Speaker gave a Fox News Russian propagandist access to January 6th security footage so that it can be whitewashed.
That same media company, Fox News, is pushing blatant Russian propaganda designed to divide global democracy and undermine support for Ukraine.
That same media company also knows Trump lied about the 2020 election and they know the coup they are denying happened was actually “treason.” (That’s what they called it.)
The Homeland Security Committee is poisoned by someone who doesn’t even know that Ukraine is in Europe, and for some reason is convinced that her take on Putin’s expansionist ambitions is better than those who actually know where Ukraine is on the map.
Taken together, these very troubling events tell the story of a party and movement that is a threat to our security, both our national security and our domestic security.
This is Sarah Jones on the Politicus Pod for PoliticusUSA’s The Daily. If you’re tired of billionaires controlling the news you see and you want to support independent news that puts The People first, please subscribe to our Substack.
Sources:
https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-guest-douglas-macgregor-claims-war-ukraine-was-not-started-russia
https://apnews.com/article/jan-6-tucker-carlson-capitol-riot-mccarthy-adc245e22f50b076925eb72948062808
https://apnews.com/article/fbi-chris-wray-testify-capitol-riot-9a5539af34b15338bb5c4923907eeb67
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/world/europe/poland-russia-spy-weapon-shipments.html?smid=url-share
Republicans Are A Threat To Our Security